The Nightowl Newswrap

Wishing Nancy Reagan a speedy recovery The former first lady is hospitalized at the Ronald Reagan-UCLA Medical Center with a broken pelvis after falling in her home last week and breaking her pelvis. She is reportedly in good spirits in spite of experiencing moderate pain, and is undergoing physical therapy. Surgery will not be required, and the recovery time is estimated to be six to eight weeks.

Republican support sliding among seniors Voters that bu$h carried without breaking a sweat have been alienated by the corporate corruption that has brought about the economic meltdown and just over half are supporting McCain this year.

What the hell is in the water in the Florida 16th? First Foley, and now Mahoney. The Democrat who took Mark Foley's seat in the 2006 midterms is being brought down by his own sex scandal. It was revealed a couple of days ago that he had a paid off a former mistress to keep their affair quiet, and today it was revealed that he was involved in a second affair. Cut him loose, Democrats. We don't need that seat badly enough to keep this (literal) fucker moored to our pier.

Reporter imprisoned in Vietnam for actually investigating and reporting Nguyen Viet Chien, a reporter for the Thanh Nien daily newspaper was sentenced to two years in prison today for "abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state." His heinous crime? He exposed a scandal involving Transportation Ministry officials siphoning off aid money, in part to bet on European soccer matches. A Lt. Colonel who was one of his sources was sentenced to one year in prison for "deliberately revealing state secrets." The police officer, now retired, who headed the corruption inquiry was given an official reprimand, and another reporter who "admitted wrongdoing" received a suspended sentence. Vincent Brossel, the Asia director for Reporters Without Borders, said that it "was a political trial, it was a trial of the liberal media."



Obama goes after Indiana Obama stayed in Michigan for a couple of weeks after the McCain campaign retreated to cement his lead in the polls, and that objective realized, the campaign is now pulling their staffers out of the state and sending them to Indiana and North Carolina - states that McCain should be able to take for granted, but can't.

Are the republicans ceding Wisconsin, too? The independent expenditures arm of the RNC has stopped making ad buys in Wisconsin, less than three weeks before the election. In 2004, John Kerry carried the state by less than one percentage point, and republicans had looked at it as a potential pick-up for McCain, but recent polls show Obama with a double-digit lead.

A firm grasp of the obvious A top official with the FCC is admitting four months out that the switch to digital teevee will be "messy" and is urging broadcasters to step up their efforts to educate the public on what is coming and what to expect. It's in their best interest to do so - they will be the most affected when analog screens go black.

Here is an economic indicator for you Hard times for everyone else mean flush times for pawn shops. People are selling off their belongings to buy gasoline.

Someone has a tin ear: A handful of top executives from American International Group Inc. spent thousands of dollars during a recent English hunting trip, even as the New York-based insurer asked for an additional $37.8 billion loan from the Federal Reserve. "This was an annual event for customers of the AIG property casualty insurance companies in the U.K. and Europe, and planned months before the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's loan to AIG," company spokesman Peter Tulupman said Wednesday. AIG officials declined to say which AIG executives attended the trip, which reports have said racked up an $86,000 tab. News of the trip surfaced just days after AIG received an additional $37.8 billion loan from the Federal Reserve, on top of a previous $85 billion emergency loan granted last month.